Two Florida Republicans, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, have asked President Donald Trump to consider an investigation into whether Cuba’s former ruler, Raúl Castro, should be indicted for the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.

The shoot-down by Cuban military planes resulted in the deaths of three U.S. citizens — Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre and Mario de la Peña — as well as the death of Pablo Morales, a U.S. permanent resident.

“We urge you to consider new, additional actions to hold the Castro regime accountable for its crimes. For that reason, within all applicable rules and regulations, we urge you to direct the Department of Justice to review whether Raúl Castro should be indicted for the illegal and heinous act” of shooting down the two civilian aircraft in international waters, Rubio and Díaz-Balart said in a letter they sent to the president on Monday.

Brothers to the Rescue made volunteer flights in the Straits of Florida to search for Cuban rafters who had fled the island by sea. The organization also made flights inside Cuban territory to drop pamphlets denouncing the government of the late Fidel Castro. At the time, Raúl Castro was the minister of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Cuban authorities asked the U.S. government to ground the flights, but they continued and on Feb. 24, 1996, two Cuban military planes shot down two of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.

In 2003, a U.S. federal court in Miami indicted three Cuban officials on charges of murder, but Raúl Castro was not among them. None of them were tried. Gerardo Hernández, leader of a Cuban spy ring known as the WASP network, was sentenced to life in prison in connection with the shoot-down but he was freed by the Obama administration as part of a prisoner exchange.

The legislators also asked Trump to direct appropriate agencies to assess whether Interpol “red notices” should be issued for the arrest and extradition to the United States “of all Cuban operatives responsible for the murders.”

Editor’s Note: “Operation Scorpion” was the codename Havana’s primary service used for their mission supporting the murder of Brothers to the Rescue members. Due to their central role in the shoot down, key members of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) should be included in any attempt to issue Interpol “red notices.”

The Cuban Five played a central role in the murder of four members of the search-and-rescue group, “Brothers to the Rescue”

By Jim Wyss, jwyss@MiamiHerald.com

The five Cuban spies recently released from U.S. custody spent a second day in Venezuela being hailed as heroes and bestowed with honors.

On Tuesday, President Nicolás Maduro honored the men at the National Pantheon, where South American liberator Simon Bolivar is interred, saying that they helped stop “dozens” of U.S. attacks on Cuba, including the bombing of hotels and the killing of foreign tourists.

Maduro also blamed the media for describing the men as “spies,” saying news agencies, including Reuters, Associated Press, AFP and EFE were “machines of media manipulation.”

“They declare war when there needs to be war and they pardon and turn people into angels when they need to be pardoned and turned into angels, even if that person is the world’s biggest murderer,” he said.

The five men were convicted in 2001 of infiltrating South Florida military installations and spying on the exile community. They were also linked to the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes that killed four exile pilots over the Florida Straits.

The last imprisoned members of the spy ring were released in December as Washington and Havana began rapprochement talks. Their release coincided with Cuba’s freeing of USAID contractor Alan Gross. The men are expected to be in Venezuela — Cuba’s closest ally — through Saturday.

The brother of one of the South Florida pilots shot down and killed by Cuban MiGs 18 years ago says he will pursue his lawsuit demanding that U.S. prosecutors submit evidence of murder against Fidel and Raúl Castro to a grand jury.

“I don’t understand what these prosecutors have been doing all this time,” said Nelson Morales, 66, whose brother Pablo was killed in the Feb. 24, 1996 shootdown along with Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre and Mario de la Peña.

Morales filed suit last year to force U.S. prosecutors in Miami to present to a grand jury any evidence of the Castro brothers’ guilt in the deaths, including recordings and interviews in which they accept responsibility for downing the planes.

The federal prosecutors filed murder charges against Gen. Ruben Martinez Puente, who commanded Cuba’s air defense in 1996, and brothers Lorenzo Alberto and Francisco Pérez Pérez, who piloted the MiGs. But they did not indict the Castro brothers.

U.S. Judge Donald H. Graham rejected Morales’ suit last month, ruling that the petitioner sought to encroach on prosecutorial discretions and that Morales had not met one of the technical requirements of the law.

Attorney Juan Carlos Zorrilla, who represents Morales, has filed a notice of appeal to the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta. He argues that the lawsuit seeks only to force the prosecutors to present the evidence to a grand jury. The grand jury and prosecutors can then decline to pursue the case, the attorney added.
Zorrilla said Morales will separately attempt to resolve the technical issue by seeking a meeting with the federal prosecutors in Miami to personally turn over the evidence against the Castro brothers and ask that it be presented to the grand jury.

Former U.S. Attorney Kendall B. Coffey and Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto presented much of the evidence to the prosecutors in 2008, but Graham ruled the law required that Morales himself present the evidence.

“We will go to Atlanta, we will do anything and everything necessary for this case,” Morales said. “I don’t understand why a federal judge and federal prosecutors are protecting these murderers.”

Zorrilla filed the “writ of mandamus” — a request for a court order requiring the government to take action — in July to force prosecutors to submit any evidence implicating Fidel and Raúl Castro in the deaths. Prosecutors also should inform the grand jury that it can vote to pursue an inquiry on its own, the lawsuit added.

Editor’s Note: Fidel Castro personally approved Directorate of Intelligence (DI) activities supporting the shoot-down of “Brothers to the Rescue” aircraft. The spy service’s codename for the mission was “Operation Scorpion.”

I was 5 years old and strapped to a tall pole across from my 3-year-old sister. The pole, a mast for a sail that was never very useful, was in the center of a raft being thrown about the Florida Straits. I don’t remember the nights, but I’m told they were so dark my mother, sitting between us, could not see us, but only feel us. I don’t remember being wet or cold, but my parents tell me the waves rolling over us were about 20 feet high. I don’t remember the sun, but after four days at sea, my skin was two shades darker than what most women would pay for at a tanning salon.

If there were a soundtrack to my life, Willy Chirino’s Nuestro Día (Our Day) would be one of the first songs on the album. The first two verses always bring tears to my eyes and remind me of the danger my family was in when Brothers to the Rescue saved our lives. Brothers to the Rescue is the organization whose pilots kept a watchful, protective eye for rafters making the perilous journey from Cuba to freedom. It was 17 years ago today that four of them were ambushed in the sky and killed by Cuban MiGs.

Tired of living in a country where he was persecuted for uttering disapproval of the government’s hateful policies and tactics, my father, then 25 years old, decided it was time to leave. My mother refused to stay behind with two young girls and no future. So after hiding in a military neighborhood for most of the summer of 1992 — and six days after Hurricane Andrew had destroyed Homestead — my family left Cuba. We left just before dawn through the middle of Varadero, a popular, and hence heavily patrolled, beach. We left on a raft engineered and built by my father with the help of a few other men who left with us.

There were nine of us — although it nearly became 10. My parents tell me that a drunk who was walking the beach helped push the raft away from the shore, then begged to come with us. But our food and water supplies were carefully rationed for nine. Our vessel, if you could call it that, was full. I remember only snippets of that night. Mostly, I recall darkness, tall grass, running on the sand, and my little sister crying while my mother tried desperately to keep her quiet. Though it was four days and two more nights before we were spotted by Brothers to the Rescue, the next thing I remember is eating delicious pastelitos. A creative humanitarian in that plane fashioned a parachute, out of a cardboard box filled with Cuban pastries from Miami, and tied it to an actual message in a bottle. The sweet parachute fell to the water and bobbed around just close enough for someone in our party to reach.
My mother recalls it was the first food in almost a week that my sister and I were able to keep down. The “bottle,” a clear plastic jar with a white sticker and bold red letters that read: “Hermanos Al Rescate” — Brothers to the Rescue — held a message that had my sister and I standing and waving excitedly up at the sky: “Don’t despair. God is with you and the U.S. Coast Guard is on its way from Key West.” I am now 26, and that plastic jar has had a place of honor in our family’s kitchen for over 20 years. Today it is filled with coffee beans my aunt sent from Cuba when she heard we were alive and safe.

Since Feb. 24, 1996, these memories are tinged by sadness. That is the day I heard that two Brothers to the Rescue planes had been shot out of the sky by Cuban military planes. As a 9-year-old child, I don’t think I understood what was going on. All I knew then of Brothers to the Rescue was that we had one of their bottles in our kitchen, and that they had sent us delicious pastries when we couldn’t keep down the tinned spam my mother had tried feeding us on that raft.

Today I am a young Cuban-American about to graduate from law school. When I see the plastic jar, I think of those men who died in the shootdown and wonder if they could have been the same pilots involved in my own family’s rescue. I may not have known them personally, but they have my eternal respect: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.

Juan Pablo Roque, the spy who returned to Cuba a day before the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue civilian planes, says he’s sorry four people were killed. But he maintains Cuba had a right to shoot the aircraft out of the sky.

By Tracey Eaton, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

HAVANA — Lt. Col. Juan Pablo Roque wore his Rolex with pride — the unique pride of a Cuban double agent who once worked for the FBI. But now the man who was once one of Cuba’s most illustrious spies is out of cash. And he wants to sell his prized watch and his house in Havana. “I need the money,” Roque said in his most extensive interview in more than 15 years. His story illustrates the uncertain life that awaits Cuban spies whose covers are blown. But it’s also a reminder of the extent and success of Cuban spying even now, 21 years after the Cold War’s end.

Roque, a former fighter pilot with Hollywood good looks, staged his defection from Cuba in 1992, swimming to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay and declaring opposition to Fidel Castro. He became a pilot for Brothers to the Rescue, a group dedicated to searching for rafters in the Florida Straits. But then he stunned everyone in 1996, slipping back into Cuba the day before Cuban MiGs shot down two civilian aircraft flown by members of the exile group.

Now 57 and living with his girlfriend in a cramped Havana apartment, Roque said he’s sorry four people were killed in the Feb. 24, 1996, incident. “If I could travel in a time machine,” he said, “I’d get those boys off the planes that were shot down.” The four dead included Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, Pablo Morales and Armando Alejandre Jr. Alejandre’s sister, Maggie Khuly, said justice was never done. “Speaking for the families, my family in particular, we’re looking forward to the day when Roque faces U.S. courts on his outstanding indictment,” said Khuly, a Miami architect.

Spy for spy

The shoot-down drove U.S.-Cuba relations to a new low and prompted then-President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which ramped up economic sanctions against Cuba.

Since then, U.S.-Cuba relations remain as chilly as ever. President Barack Obama loosened some travel restrictions to Cuba after taking office, but has done little else to ease the tension. In fact, U.S. officials have worked steadily to undermine the socialist government, spending more than $200 million on Cuba democracy programs since 1996.